


Ouroboros

by Accipitae



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Death, Exorcisms, Gen, Obscurus (Harry Potter), Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sane Tom Riddle, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, The Blitz, Time Loop, Wool's Orphanage (Harry Potter), World War II, Young Tom Riddle, it doesn’t stick, religious trauma, trauma in general really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28356153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accipitae/pseuds/Accipitae
Summary: It wasn't the Dying that scared him, it was the Returning.Or- Tom Riddle is reborn.Again.And again.And again.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The snake swallows its tail again and again and again and nothing ever changes, does it?

The first time around, he was a good boy. 

Well, maybe not _good_ , but certainly better than he'd be in lives yet lived. His magic had been tiny. Soft in his chest and barely there. It didn't leak out from under his skin like a spring, or thicken in the air around him like a rare summer heatwave. It didn't thrum in his veins and whisper dark nothings to him even as he tried to block it out.

No, it hadn't turned sour and grand and consuming until later.

That first life, he was just a boy, born of a near squib and a muggle and a love potion, with only a shred of magic himself. Barely anything to notice. Not even enough to get a Hogwarts letter, had he lived to eleven.

Scarlet fever had taken his first life when he was but a toddler. But what Tom Riddle lacked in magic, he made up with something else.

He could start over.

The second life was not much different from the first. He’d died young enough that he couldn’t really remember before, didn’t know he’d done all this before. But his magic was still small and weak, and the fever still took him. But it was twice as strong as his first time, because even though his body went back to the start, his magic didn’t.

By his third life, he was strong enough to survive the fever, and strong enough for accidental magic. Small things, things that could be ignored or explained away or laughed off.

He was quiet and bookish and didn't much like playing with the other children, but he wasn't a freak of nature. He did not make windows shatter with tantrums or slam doors with nothing but his mind. He did not command snakes with the devil’s tongue.

They did not torment him for his unnaturalness, and he did not lash out in turn, and no priest was called.

When an auburn haired man who claimed to be a wizard came to visit Tom, there were no stolen items in his wardrobe, so there was no reason to set that wardrobe on fire.

Tom went to Hogwarts, was sorted to Ravenclaw ( _you could be Slyhterin too, you could be great there. It's in your blood. But no, you have that thirst for knowledge, to eat it all up and demand more, to know. Yes, I think Ravenclaw for you_ ) he made friends and he learned and he grew and it was glorious.

Then the war started and the bombs fell and Tom Riddle died again.

And again.

And again.

His fourth life was very different from the first three. He didn't remember everything, not at first. When he was small he was much the same as before, but by his third birthday and the discovery of self, he was beginning to recall things from the lives before.

When he drew his fourth first breath, his magic core was as large and as strong as when he drew his third last breath full of ash and dust and blood. 

His fourth time he was a boy who knew too much and who could make things happen that were not natural.

It was the first life where the priests would be called. It would not be the last.

He still survived long enough to make it to Hogwarts, and the Hat begrudgingly put him back in Ravenclaw ( _you are far more Slytherin, but as you wish_ ) and he did not return for Christmas break his fourth year, and he did not die in the rubble of a bombed out building.

Instead, he returns to London to find the orphanage evacuated without him. He was murdered in a muggle alley a week later, trying to find something to eat.

So he lived and died and lived again.

It was maybe his tenth life, maybe his twentieth, he wondered why no one seemed to care he kept dying. Where was the Ministry? Where was Dumbledore? Why did he keep dying with shrapnel in his chest? 

If the wizarding world didn’t care about orphaned muggleborn boys, he would just have to make them.

His next life, Tom decided that the world was against him. The one after, he decided he was going to remake the world, even if he had to tear it apart first.

_Adveniat regnum meum. Fiat voluntas mea._

There was a delicate balance between control and anonymity, he learned. Too meek, and the other orphans would walk all over him. Too vicious, and Mrs Cole would drown him in the tub again. He became an expert at toeing the line. The perfect balance of lashing out at the children to keep them in line, but always covering his tracks so that the Matron had no proof it was him.

It rarely was enough to keep her from calling a priest. He'd lived through so many exorcisms he could recite the words from memory. 

_Ipse venene bibas._

It didn't mean they hurt any less.

Tom could never stop his flinch every time Dumbledore lit his wardrobe on fire. He knew it would be fine, that nothing was destroyed, but it never stopped the jolt of fear.

_No, please._

_That's all I have._

Ever since that first life, so many years ago, Dumbledore had looked at him with suspicion, and later something that might be close to unease.

And every life, that look grew stronger and stronger.

But Tom could do nothing about it. The only way he could survive his first eleven years was to make the other children afraid of him enough not to kill him for his unnaturalness (the accidental magic never stopped, no matter how much he grew and learned and tried to stomp it down. The night terrors and cracked windows and ripped up floorboards were a constant in ever life. He might as well become the demon they thought he was).  
But with their fear came Dumbledore's suspicion, and later, his hate.

The Hat stopped bothering to put him in any house but Slytherin. Sometimes his housemates were the cause of his death, sometimes they weren’t. Eventually he learned the Pureblood song and dance, could fake it like the best of them, and finally, finally, he went from loathed to _one of them._

It was the first step.

He quickly realized he couldn’t do things the legal way. Wizards were too fixed in their ways, too reluctant to change. Revolution it was.

He could have done without the assassinations.

Sometimes, he wondered, why this was happening. Why he was reborn time and time again. Why the world seemed to want him dead so badly. It was like nature was against his very existence, trying to snuff him out in any way it could.

But Tom Riddle survived. It was the only thing he knew how to do.

It was many lives later he discovered it.

Horcrux.

He wouldn’t have to start over, if he never died.

He wouldn’t have to begin again and again and again-

-that itchy crawling feeling under his skin, a body too small, flesh too tight

a knife carving him open, rosemary and hawthorn stuffed under his skin

his fingers broken and his back weeping red

smoke choking his lungs and a beam over his chest slowly crushing he can’t breath he can't see there's blood in his mouth his ears are ringing or is that another bomb oh please oh please no I don’t want to die-

He never considered what splitting a soul does to a person’s mind, but then again, it couldn’t be worse than dying again and again and again.

It worked, until it didn’t, and he’d lost himself in the process and he’d finally almost won he’d finally almost made it but what was the cost (everything) what did it cost (you lost everything)

again

Tom Riddle took his hundredth first breath-

-and began again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leaving this as a one shot for now, but I do have plans to continue it, I just need to plot things out first.  
> But for now, I need to go to sleep. It’s 2am.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, to heal a bone, you have to rebreak it first.  
> Sometimes, to move on, you have to give up.

_Tom’s first life was considered his best, or what he believed to be his first life since he’d died too young during the first two to really remember anything._

_He was a handsome baby, small and quiet and easy to care for, so he was an instant favorite. He was good at entertaining himself, and polite as a child, so he was allowed his…. eccentricities. If they heard him hissing at garden snakes, well he was just playing a childish game. If he had a rubber ball no one remembered before, well he must have just found it. If his hair regrew too quickly after cutting, there was nothing wrong with that really, Tom was just a healthy child! Sometimes their hair grows quickly._

_The other children were pleasant, but there was no connection. He never managed to make any genuine friendships with any of them. Even at the beginning, Tom Riddle was just a bit too_ odd _._

_Tom was fine with that. It meant he was special._

* * *

It was just before dawn on January 1st-

-a birthday right between the life and death of a year, how fitting. Born as his mother died-

And Tom lay on his little cot in his little room. It had once upon a time been a broom closet. Small, ignored, forgot just like him. Couldn’t room him with the other children. Too dangerous. Too volatile.

- _why couldn’t the little beast just drop dead already?_

(ligillemency had long since become uncontrollable. He couldn’t help the thoughts of other people bleeding into his own mind)

Tiny room, wood, splinters. Stains of spilled chemicals and the heavy odor of bleach. Home sweet home.

Tom’s eyes burned. He wouldn’t cry, hadn’t cried in a while. Not in my many lives. It was just the bleach, the dust.

He sobbed into his cot.

He was eleven years and some odd hours old, he was seventy one and collapsing into ash, he was centuries, eons, endless time packing into one frail body cursed to do this over and over and over-

He was so so tired

His skull was fracturing under the memories. He was drowning. Was it the cave again? Swept under and down down down among the corpses to rot away? Was that water in his lungs? Smoke? His skin blistered and melted off, his bones cracking as the blaze consumed him. As poison at him inside out and his organs slopped out and blood filled his throat and he _couldn’t breath_

Tom gasped a lungful of air.

Still alive, still alive.

Why was he still alive?

Every eleventh birthday, like clockwork, Tom remembered _everything_.

He had bits and pieces. Small fragments of memories, deja vu. _I’ve seen this before. I’ve done this before. Familiar familiar familiar._

But it was always the moment that he turned eleven _again again again_ that it all came back.

It was enough to drive one _mad_.

He’d never been all that sane. Never been all there. So many repeats, over and over and over again and again. When would it end?

Tom choked on his laughter.

What was another spin around?

What was another turn?

He’d be doing this again and again for all eternity?

What had he done to deserve this hell?

_Oh. Right._

_Horcrux_

_War_

_I did this I did this I did this_

_My fault_

_It’s my fault_

_I did this_

_I did_

_I did_

_Why_

_Why Why_

_Why why Why_

_Why_

_Why_

_Why_

_Let me die already_

He deserved this.

Tom turned over, fell off the cot. Cold floor. Hard ground.

Ouch

The air was knocked out of him but he kept _laughing._

~~It’s better than screaming~~

He lay there, back on the dirty ground. His bed sheet tangled around him. This was the hell he’d made for himself.

The memories were always worst when they first returned. Too full, too much. His bones breaking under their weight, splintering, spawned off, powder, dirt, mud mudblood, filthy filthy

_Please leave me alone_

His head was too full. His skull whistling like a boiling kettle. He wanted to scream. Scream until his tongue tore out and and his throat folded in on itself and the sound was smothered into nothing and there was nothing left to scream for.

He bit his fingers not to make a sound.

The copper burned his mouth.

Which life was this? Which version was he living? He counted his bloody fingers, counted each pale toe. He still had them all. 

He hadn’t been locked in the woodshed overnight during a freeze, then.

Or maybe it just hasn’t happened yet

He ran his fingers down his boney spine. Felt the grooves and rivets of scars. Mangled, twisting, twining like serpents. Was this Mrs Cole and her switch? Was this the Father and his whip? Was it Mr Jones and his leather belt?

no one ever wanted little Tommy Riddle

_sent back every time_

His ran his skeletal fingers over knobby wrists, up and down stick thin arms. Not enough meat, too many bones. Not even a proper meal for a pack of rats.

Mrs Cole never did like wasting food on him.

(that would only get worse once the war started)

_You should go to Hogwarts just for a proper meal_

He wondered how he was going to die this time.

He wondered if he was already dead

Tom pressed pale fingers against his sternum, against his throat. Searching for a pulse. Just a corpse, just a corpse.

Just a corpse waiting to happen.

There it was, a soft flutter under his fingertips. Stuttering. His heartbeat always had a slight hiccup.

_Always were a sickly child. Nothing to be done for it_

Tom felt like sobbing. He felt like laughing.

He couldn’t decide which, so he did both,

Everything felt _empty empty empty_. Hollowed out. 

He was just a shell of a person. An empty husk just walking around pretending to be human. He’d left everything he was and everything he could have been fifty years in the future in the ruins of the courtyard of the first home he’d ever know.

He’d made those ruins with his own two hands.

Tom laughed and he sobbed and he clawed at his face because the skin he wore was of someone he never wanted to be again but he was no snake, could not shed himself.

He could never get rid of himself.

Tom gnawed at his broken fingers to muffle his racking sobs, strangle the laughter in his throat, he tried to drown himself in his guilt.

He just wanted to stop waking up in 1938, he didn’t mean to- to-

He wished bitterly that for once in his wretched existence, his death would _stick_ . If Tom Riddle died and _stayed_ dead then none of that, none of the destruction, the death, none of those people…. 

Tom Riddle had single handedly led to the extinction of nearly half of magical Britain.

Why could he never get it _right_? Why did everything he try just fall apart around him? 

_this is your hell_

His hands wrapped around his throat and he _squeezed._

_Don’t you remember, you idiot boy? You can’t ever die._

Tom held his throat and wailed. 

His magic roiled and bulged beneath his skin, whispered out of his pores, dripped from his fingers and flooded his stomach. He drank it down like holy water, like liquid sin. It ebbed and flowed around him. Soft as a lover, tight as a noose. It boiled and burned and he _hated hated hated_

It was the only companion he ever had

 _Horcruxes_ , he thought bitterly, _were a mistake._

His hands trembled around his throat. Too weak to end it. Too weak to start again _again again again._

The cracks grew and grew and grew, and he had no will left to hold them together. The shards splintered out and pierced his skin, bleeding him dry and hollowing him out. _Empty empty empty_. A hollow husk of spun glass and lies pretending it deserved to be a person.

Tom Riddle finally let himself shatter completely.


End file.
